Episode 6 Review

October 4, 2013

Episode 6 is the final chapter in The Last Fall of Ashes. This episode focuses on two major events: the final standoff between Michael and Dane, and Alina’s choice on how to end her story. Much of this series looks at other people, most notably men, telling Alina’s story and effectively controlling her. This method of having other people telling the main character’s story also means there are gaps. Details and essential moments on what happened to Alina come up as blank pages. The truth on what happened to Alina gets lost every time her story is retold, and she gets caught in whatever other people perceive her to be.For Alina the drugs not only functioned as an escape but it was her way of taking control of her story. The Last Fall of Ashes is a tragedy. A good tragedy in that both Michael and Dane still don’t understand, even in Alina’s end, that Alina is a separate human being from their idea of her. Michael only Alina in relation to him, and for a moment he recognizes the faults in the logic of ‘seeing the fairytale.’ Dane did the same thing, and his continued tragedy is that only sees the fairytale version of Alina.Is that greed or lust? The crime of not seeing and accepting a person for all of them, including their own mistakes and faults? That’s real love. Everyone around Alina has manipulated her for their own satisfaction, including shaming her body on multiple occasions.This episode accurately concludes the story, and carries on its fantastic aesthetic value. Every scene has a specific tone and mood, and often this is emphasized with colour or lack of it. Scenes with emphasis on Alina will have increased green, blue, or yellow. Scenes with Alina and Michael for example have decreased saturation, and shows Alina’s colour draining from her life.I know I keep talking about Alina, as the story is supposed to be about her, but there’s some missing pieces. Alina’s story could have been fuller with scenes of what happened to her after she left Micheal. Is that when she went to shoot the pictures? How did she get in that bad place, and how did she get out of it? It’s hard to empathize with her when you don’t see Alina’s transformation into the drug addict she’s meant to be. Alina’s story, like I said, is told through other people and we don’t get the real person. We get fractured versions of Alina, the perfect girlfriend, the slut, the addict, the victim. None of these are the real Alina, and that’s the real tragedy.